


Patient Zero

by ELG



Category: X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ghost of Jean Grey insists that Scott Summers is still alive and Logan should return to Alkali Lake to look for him. Contains physical abuse of a major character (Cyclops) and attempted rape of the same (by Sabretooth). (Basically a movie canon fixit fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patient Zero

Every time Victor looked at the impregnable, perfectly chiseled surface of Cyclops, he remembered a terrified teenage boy, pinned by his hands, flinching from his clawed fingers and saying ‘Don’t! Please don’t!’ 

If Stryker hadn’t interfered he would have given the boy plenty more to mewl about; the combination of helplessness and all-American squeaky-clean good looks making him want to mess up that pretty face and make him beg some more. Unfortunately, Cyclops had got away from him all too soon, and had been given the protection of Charles Xavier while he honed his powers. On their last few meetings, Summers had not even had the decency to remember to be afraid of him, and the last savage blast from his optic energy beams had nearly torn a hole through Victor’s usually impregnable carcass. The fact that the attack had been coordinated by his own amnesiac brother, Logan, had made it no easier to bear. Victor had been slow to recover and thoughts of revenge had been as enticing as they had seemed unlikely to ever be fulfilled. Cyclops was the leader of the X-Men, a man never without the protection of not only his own powers but those of his teammates. He was never vulnerable and never alone.

Unbeknown to Victor, however, that was about to change.

 

Victor had been following the scent for almost an hour. It was familiar in the way a recurring dream was familiar – elusive but tantalizing. It smelt a lot like Cyclops, but with strange undertones of deep water and primordial fire. It also smelt of blood.

He skirted the lake, aware all the while of how singed it smelt, as if the water had boiled and then cooled again. Something strange had happened here; something dramatic, dangerous, and terrible. He was sorry he’d missed it. It sounded like his kind of show. Even sorrier when a gust of wind sent his brother’s scent in his direction. So, Wolverine had been here, too. Been and gone. Unlucky for him that the wind had been blowing the wrong way, carrying that faint Cyclops scent off to the east. It added an extra frisson to an already enjoyable hunt to know that he would be the one to find what Wolverine had evidently been looking for and had missed. Then it occurred to him that if Logan had been looking for Cyclops, he would have found him, whatever way the wind was blowing; his brother having the tenacity of a hungry bloodhound. Even if Logan thought Cyclops was dead, it was a mystery that he should have stopped looking before he found a corpse – Victor knew the X-Men were the type to insist on carrying fallen comrades home.

He was still puzzling over the matter when the scent grew stronger and he increased his pace. Mister Sinister had said that any mutant would do, but Victor knew he would be particularly pleased to have Cyclops back under his control again. Like Victor himself, Mister Sinister had once had the boy exactly where he wanted him, before he had run away.

The smell of blood was stronger and he increased his pace. He was going to be angry if Cyclops was dead after all, but as he drew closer, he could hear the sound of a heart beating faintly. Another few steps and there was Cyclops sprawled unconscious on the ground, looking as if he had been hurled a considerable distance and had been lucky to have a relatively soft landing. Even so he had cut his head open and the blood was running in a sticky trail down the side of his face. No visor, so it was just as well he was out for the count. 

Satisfaction warmed his veins as he looked down at the helpless, supine figure of Cyclops. Rent, bruised, and unconscious, with a head injury that looked serious enough to keep its victim quiet but that wasn’t bad enough to necessitate surgery – that was just the way Victor liked his captured X-Men. He reached down, grabbed Cyclops by the frayed remnants of his jacket and hauled him up and over his shoulder. He suspected a few of his ribs were cracked, and that his rough treatment was doing them no good at all, but no one ever said that life was fair.

He slapped him on the ass, growling, “Miss me, pretty boy?” 

Cyclops emitted a faint groan, but was too deeply unconscious to awaken even with the pain from his ribs probably penetrating into his dreams. Whistling tunelessly, Victor began to carry him back to his vehicle. He just knew that Mister Sinister was going to be very happy with his day’s work.

 

The scans of Patient Zero’s brain revealed a great deal of interest to the scientist. To the knowledgeable eye it was clear that an injury in childhood had been exacerbated by a series of artificial blocks added at different times. The areas of the patient’s past from which his conscious mind had been excluded would have been extensive even before the most recent injury; that, however, had caused a classic retrograde amnesia. No surprise, at all, after looking at those scans to discover that the patient had no memory of his name, or past history, and only a general knowledge of the workings of the world.

Those who had made a lifetime’s study of mutant powers would also have found much to interest them. The incredible force of the blast that had knocked Patient Zero from one side of Alkali Lake to the other, fracturing his skull, breaking several of his ribs, and rendering him unconscious in the process, had also knocked out his mutant abilities. These would undoubtedly have returned had Patient Zero been left to recover naturally in a place where the sun’s rays could reach him, rather than being kept in an underground prison where he had been subject to a battery of rigorous tests. Certainly, his skull and ribs had been given time to heal, but he had been kept in the dark and not allowed to fully regain his strength. Mister Sinister had been working on his own mutant ability depressant long before Worthington Labs had announced their own ‘cure’, and he had never met with a better test subject: a mutant whose powers were temporarily in abeyance and could be kept in that condition as long as the subject was kept away from sunlight, and whose mutant powers and physiognomy Mister Sinister was minutely familiar with from previous experimentation. Patient Zero, to a true scientist, was the answer to a prayer.

He had already discovered, having obtained a sample and carried out his own tests, that the Worthington ‘cure’ was only temporarily effective, but by examining the impact of the psychic blast that had knocked out Patient Zero’s abilities he could more easily detect where exactly in the brain the controls for mutant ability were located and carry out his own experiments. He was not, of course, going to lobotomize such a valuable subject, but he had, even without actual surgery, learned a huge amount through extensive scanning, testing, and observation. Electric shock therapy, when applied to the area where the mutant ability should usually be active, caused surprisingly little damage to the brain tissue – which, interestingly, showed an unusual ability to fully repair itself – whereas the lesions caused in the other parts of the brain from the previous experiments showed no such ability to heal, although it was possible to see that connections to the past were still possible with enough psychic stimulation.

The physical tests carried out on the Patient’s body had been less useful. Patient Zero showed no increased healing abilities anywhere else and seemed to suffer as much pain as any normal creature when subjected to bodily ill-use. Attempts to replicate the temporarily deactivated ‘mutant’ brain tissue and graft it to other parts of the body had not been successful. Even after several treatments, there was no lessening in the time that cuts and bruises took to heal.

From the psychological viewpoint, Patient Zero had shown fascinating resilience. Despite having no memory of his name or history, and being therefore denied the usual comforts utilized by prisoners to sustain themselves during captivity, he had still made several attempts to escape, some of them displaying an above average ability to plan ahead, observe his surroundings, make psychological deductions about his captors, and to strategize to utilize weaknesses in their routine. He had also shown the ability to learn from his own mistakes, with each escape attempt eliminating the cause of his previous capture and taking him an increasing distance into the underground compound before he was recaptured. His refusal to allow the punishment meted out to him for these unsuccessful escape attempts to influence his behavior – in the logical sense of inhibiting his next break for freedom – did suggest a stubborn intransigence in response to reinforced stimuli, but it could not entirely be dismissed as sheer animal stupidity, the impetus of the ego and illogical pride in forming the behavior of young males also needing to be taken into account.

The patient’s knowledge of martial arts had also stayed with him although, when questioned, mapping of his brain – as he was strongly encouraged to answer through painful stimuli – proved that he quite genuinely had no idea how and when he had learned those skills. Other areas of interest were his stubborn refusal to admit to being in pain even when pain was inflicted upon him. This, along with the escape attempts, suggested that, even without the benefit of access to his past history, certain core characteristics remained intact. In short he might not know who he was but who he was remained very much the man that he had always been. Patient Zero had always been stubborn, willful, and unwilling to admit when he was beaten, and so he remained. 

Ironically, even actual beatings, were denied as much as possible, although this denial did follow a pattern that was becoming increasingly predictable. Confronted by his usual oppressor, someone who had demonstrated repeatedly that he was in every way physically stronger and impossible to injure by any methods available to Patient Zero, Patient Zero nevertheless invariably put up a vigorous physical resistance, this despite clearly having the intelligence to know that this could not succeed. When – as was inevitable given the fact of his being bound, half-starved, weakened from previous ill-use, and, without his mutant powers, very much the physical inferior of his attacker – he was overcome and appropriately punished for his intransigence, he would insist that he was unhurt and undaunted. Even though all this ever achieved was further ill-use, Patient Zero still seemed to consider provoking his oppressor to acts of irrational violence a victory for himself. Tests had not been able to prove one way or another if this illogical response was in any way linked to his recent or previous brain injury.

***

Logan was used to being woken up at night by bad dreams, haunted through his slumbers by terrible visions that were all the more horrifying for quite probably being events that he had witnessed sometime in his long, lost past. This, however, was a new torture, and he now got why Cyclops had been driven half out of his mind by whispers in the dark. Every time he slept, he heard Jean’s voice pleading with him. Mysterious voices in his mind were not even the problem – since meeting up with the other X-Men he had grown used to being psychically violated by all and sundry. The problem was that the voice in his mind was a dead woman demanding that he save her dead husband.

He woke up, sweating, claws extended, heart pounding. “Damnit, Jeannie, if I could help him, I would,” he breathed. “But that thing you became killed him.” _And then I killed you._

It made it worse that the voice in his head seemed to know all that. She didn’t sound crazy. She sounded as calm and wise as the Jean he remembered; full of sorrow and regret, but hanging in the ether somehow, with the last of her strength, to deliver this message. Putting her faith in the man who loved her, to save the man she loved. It was the kind of thing Jean would have done, too. Exactly like her to not doubt for a moment that Logan would risk his neck to save the guy who had cut him out with the woman he wanted. Which, annoyingly, he would have done, in a heartbeat, if there had been anyone left to save, but Jean – Phoenix – whatever that thing was that had come out of the lake – had blasted Scott Summers out of existence, leaving only his broken visor and a lot of weeping kids.

_Scott’s still alive. He needs your help. Please, Logan. You’re the only one who can save him…._

It had begun, a month before, as an indistinct whisper, but in every night since, the message was a little clearer and he carried more of it into the waking world. This was the first time when he had woken with it still sounding in his mind – as clear as if Jean were standing in the room with him.

Logan put his head in his hands and groaned. He had not signed up for any of this – falling in love with a woman who was already taken, getting attached to new people when he had always been a loner, being stuck in loco parentis to a bunch of mutant kids, none of it. And going on a vision quest for a guy he knew to have been blown to atoms by the unstable powers of the woman Logan had once loved – if he were honest, still loved? That he had not signed up for most of all.

***

No one who knew Victor Creed well would have called him a Sadist. He simply didn’t have the patience for it. When someone annoyed him he wanted to hurt him, quickly and thoroughly. Long drawn out torture was simply not his thing. Which was just as well for Patient Zero.

This time, the sneaky little bastard had first waited until Mister Sinister was away; meaning that only Victor was in charge; before launching an escape so successful that he had reached the mouth of the old mine workings that Sinister was using to conceal his underground laboratory. Adding insult to injury, he had got Victor to help him, by pissing him off that morning enough that Victory had hit him – what he hadn’t realized at the time was that when the son-of-a-bitch had uncharacteristically cringed from the blow and put his leather cuffed hands up to ward it off, he had actually been using Victor’s claws to half-sever his bonds. Then Zero – as Victor made a point of calling him to his face – had worked on the sliced leather straps until he could get his hands free. 

After that Zero had excelled himself, tripping the guard who came into his cell to bring his lunch, chopping him efficiently to the back of the neck, then taking the tazer from his belt, using it on the hapless guard from outside the door who had run in at the sound of the commotion and sprinting silently for the exit, taking out everyone who got in his way with a combination of stealth, martial arts, and that damned tazer. The only reason there hadn’t been fatalities was because Mister Sinister had been smart enough not to give anyone a loaded gun.

Victor had caught him as he was making his dash for the light and freely admitted that he had lost his temper. As he brought Zero down with a tackle to the legs – just as he had brought him down almost ten years earlier – the little bastard had jammed the tazer into his shoulder. The pain had jolted through him horrifically, and he had yanked the tazer out of Zero’s hand, then picked him up by the throat and hurled him against the nearest wall. 

That was when Zero should have slid down the wall and lain quiet, and if he had known what was good for him, he would have done, but the fool was crazed with the sight of sunlight, and perhaps the smell of freedom, and simply threw himself back at the way out, kicking and struggling like a mad thing when Victor bore him down again. There was nothing like a foot in the face for setting alight an already raging temper and for a moment they grappled, the weaker mutant fighting with every bit of strength, guile, and skill he had while Victor bludgeoned him with his fists.

Evidently realizing that he was very soon going to be beaten into unconsciousness, Zero went limp and then, as Victor faltered in confusion, kicked him two-footed in the groin, twisted over and once more dived for the exit, snatching up the tazer as he did so.

Victor’s roar of fury echoed through the old mine workings like thunder and he fell upon the prisoner like an animal. He knocked the tazer out of his hand before he received more than a slight shock, and then he dragged him up by the hair and slammed him against the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of his body. The rage was coursing through his veins like fever and the next few minutes were wrapped in a red mist. He remembered slamming Zero repeatedly against every hard surface he could find – the bastard fighting him every step of the way – and then knocking him down, grabbing him by the ankle and dragging him along the floor, Zero kicking and struggling all the time while his head bounced off the floor. The resistance had infuriated Victor further and he had dragged him into the laboratory and thrown him into the coldwater tank, holding him under the almost freezing liquid and immensely enjoying his increasingly frantic struggles, until one of the lab assistants dared to whimper something about the patient not breathing. Hauled out of the tank and punched in the guts, Zero quickly spewed up a pint of cold water, and, soaked to the skin, and with chattering teeth, told Victor exactly how he should go and procreate with himself.

Victor had dragged him back to his cell by his sopping hair, his rage still roaring in his brain, claws extended to their full extent. It was the fact that the little shit just wouldn’t stop being an X-Man even though he no longer knew what an X-Man was that infuriated him the most. Once back in the cell, Victor grabbed his wrists in his left hand, holding them over his head and shoved him face first against the wall, Zero grunting a little as he turned his head to take the brunt of the impact on his left cheekbone, but still stubbornly refusing to cry out.

“I’ll make you squeal,” Victor snarled and slashed down with his claws, raking them savagely from Zero’s right shoulder all the way down to his left hip.

The cry of pain that elicited was music to his ears and he smiled cruelly. “You want to be an X-Man? Let’s make you an X-Man forever.”

The slow drag of his claws from Zero’s left shoulder to his right hip was even more enjoyable, especially as he took his time, wanting the prisoner to feel every inch of those razor sharp claws tearing through his skin. The way the blood welled up under his nails was delicious, as was the way the guy’s knees buckled at the shock of the pain. Victor kicked his ankle to keep his legs under him and with a tremendous effort Zero struggled to stifle his moans and stay upright. The bloody ‘X’ now incised into the prisoner’s back was a thing of beauty and Victor leaned forward to run his tongue along the deepest cut and taste the blood. 

And, at last, he was getting some results. It had taken near-drowning, a body-battering beating, and now this sudden blood loss to soften him up, but all of the above plus the shock of Victor’s warm tongue flickering across his open wounds, finally shook Zero’s maddening self-possession.

He said breathlessly, “Get off me...!” and there was the edge of panic Victor had been craving for all these weeks; there was the boy he had once been, scared and captive and under his control. Here, at last, was his Achilles heel. Given what a straight arrow the bastard was, Victor should have worked out before that it was anything unseemly that would really shake him up. 

Victor leaned in and flickered his bloody tongue across Zero’s ear, whispering, “I’m going to ram my cock so far up your ass it will give you a nosebleed, you little….”

Which was when Patient Zero slammed his head back with everything he had, breaking Victor’s nose in two places.

***

Logan had thought that the worst thing would be to drive all the way back to Alkali Lake and still not know why he was here. It turned out that what was worse was to drive back to Alkali Lake and smell Scott Summers’ blood on the cool early evening breeze. 

He felt as if his stomach had just done a somersault. There was relief, of course, but there was also stupefaction and a cold curl of dread. Dead men didn’t bleed, which meant Scott was alive, just as Dream Jean had said, but it was six weeks since he had thought Scott was atomized. What the hell had been happening to Cyclops in the last six weeks?

He followed the scent of blood at a loping run, feeling more than half an animal with anger and anxiety. He was the one who had believed the broken visor meant that Cyclops was dead. He was the reason why no one had looked for his body. Jean had certainly reacted to the visor with shame and horror. She had hurt Cyclops for sure, but was it possible that some part of Jean had managed to fling him away from Phoenix’s dark powers? Had she managed to cling onto just enough control to save the life of the man she loved?

For a few moments Logan’s mind was awash with the horror of Cyclops lying here, broken and bleeding, for six endless weeks, surviving on lake water and grass roots, then he got another whiff of the blood on the breeze and reason reasserted itself. That blood was fresh, as in a new wound, not the pus-scented weep of an old one. There was not a whiff of gangrene, feces, or urine on the air, which there sure as hell would be if Cyclops had been too smashed up to move and left to manage alone and untended by a dam-flooded lake for a month and a half. Also, Cyclops was damned difficult to kill. The Danger Room and real-world enemies had been throwing worst-case scenarios at him for almost a decade and there was very little he wasn’t able to deal with. Logan had let memories of that unshaven, sleep-deprived creature of their last meeting overwhelm him, but that was never who Cyclops had truly been. Grieving Cyclops wasn’t Everyday Cyclops, and Everyday Cyclops could take pretty much any shit life threw at him and, quite dexterously, and without unnecessary use of profanity, throw it right back. He might angst about whether or not Xavier was happy with his leadership skills, and whine about the need to protect humans from the fallout of their epic mutant squabbles. He might have a stick so far up his ass that it needed surgical removal, and too many annoying characteristics to count, but he was _tough_. 

Logan hung onto that thought as the scent of blood grew stronger. There was an opening to an old mine works up ahead. He remembered from the map that there had been another area under the old dam that had not been used by Stryker. It made sense that there might be some caverns unflooded and that someone might be keeping Cyclops there, perhaps waiting for him to heal up before they sold him to the highest bidder. On the open market, the leader of the X-Men was presumably worth a good price. He just hoped it wasn’t that Calypso-Callisto-Whatever woman who had him – the leader of the Morlocks that Storm had told him about, who had apparently wanted to keep Cyclops as a pet. He might not like the guy, but he didn’t want him to have spent the last six weeks as a sex slave.

The blood scent was fresh all around the entrance to the mine, but it wasn’t arterial, and not a life-threatening gush of the stuff, just proof of a wound. More importantly, proof of life. Logan would take smacked around Cyclops over dead Cyclops any day of the week. Another few paces and the stench of Sabretooth was overpowering. The other mutant with claws had been exuding palpable rage all over the unmanned corridor. Going by the scent trail, it wasn’t just his anger he had been throwing around. Cyclops hadn’t been bleeding heavily but he had certainly been bounced off a lot of hard surfaces. It seemed that Wolverine wasn’t the only mutant who found Scott Summers trying to live with. Sabretooth was a psycho, of course, and Logan was genuinely sorry if Cyclops had had that guy for a jailor for the last six weeks, but the scent pattern here also spoke strongly of an attempted escape, and if Cyclops was well enough to make a break for it, he couldn’t be in too rough shape.

Logan grimaced as the smell of blood got stronger and the smears and spatters told their own story. Cyclops seemed to have been fighting back every step of the way, and that was good news, but Sabretooth had not been pulling his punches.

It was the water tank that made Logan’s anger really begin to flare. It had been simmering before, controllable, useful, a means to sharpen his senses, but now he was getting pissed. He had been tortured in one of those tanks himself. One of those tanks was usually the centerpiece to the worst of his nightmares, and he didn’t appreciate the memory jog. Also, if anyone was going to throw Cyclops into a freezing tank of water and hold him under until his lungs were bubbling, it was damned well going to be one of his long suffering team mates, not some random mutant off the streets.

All the little mental quips he had been using to keep himself under control, shrivelled up as he followed the blood and water trail to the cell. The stench of pain made him flinch and there was a lot more blood in the air than there had been before. Apparently the abuse en route had just been the hors d’oeuvres, the main course of punishment for attempting to escape had been administered in here.

His claws were out before he had thought and he sliced through the iron bolts of the cell door, forcing himself to pick it up and move it when he wanted to hurl it into the distance.

It was so dark that it took a moment for his eyes to adjust and then he saw that Cyclops was on his knees, bound in about as uncomfortable a position as could be managed by someone with a length of chain and a nasty outlook. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but had then been hauled up by the chain being thrown over a ceiling beam, forcing him to lean forward until his forehead was practically touching the ground if he didn’t want his arms to snap. He was sopping wet, freezing cold, and smelt strongly of blood and pain, and _angry_ Sabretooth.

As Logan took a pace into the room, Cyclops lifted his head with difficulty and said, through teeth that were very emphatically chattering with cold and not fear, “Fuck you, Victor. Do what you like, you’ll still be an animal.”

“It really is you,” Logan said in shock, somehow the proof of all his senses not having been quite enough until he heard Cyclops speak.

The second shock was when Cyclops lifted his head higher and looked at him. The fact that he had had the absolute _shit_ kicked out of him, and had cuts and bruises all over the place, was upsetting but not surprising. But his eyes, the eyes that Logan had never seen until this moment, were fringed by long black eyelashes, were a clear, bright blue, and were breathtakingly beautiful. Summers had been handsome in an uptight sort of fashion, wearing the visor, but like this he looked young, vulnerable, and _much_ too pretty. Logan darted forward, sniffing the air for the smell of semen. He slashed through the chains with one flex of his claws and took Cyclops by the shoulders to steady him as his arms came down with wincing force. He sniffed him rapidly and definitely got a whiff of aroused Sabretooth.

He hacked through the cuffs to free him, saying anxiously, “What did that animal do to you?”

That was the third shock, when Cyclops looked right at him and showed not a single glimmer of recognition. Logan’s heart reeled. “Are you blind? Did Jean blind you?” He ran a hand in front of those astonishingly blue eyes, understanding for the first time in his life why bad poets used nauseating phrases like ‘crystalline orbs’ and ‘cerulean gaze’ when they just meant that a dude had blue eyes. Sometimes ‘blue’ really didn’t cut it, after all.

“You know me?” Cyclops said, and although his voice was a little ragged with pain, and he was shivering violently with cold, he sounded lucid and reasonable. “No, I’m not blind. I can see you just fine, but I had a head injury when they brought me here and I’ve lost my memory. Sorry, if we knew each other before…?”

“We did,” Logan managed a little unsteadily. Of all the roles that he had ever been expected to play, he had never thought that one of them would be memory keeper for someone else. “I’m Logan.”

“Well, Logan, if it’s any consolation, even though I don’t remember you, I already like you way more than the other guy with claws.”

Logan noticed that his adamantium talons were still out and that far from being fazed, Amnesiac!Summers was looking at them only with curiosity.

“What metal cuts through steel like butter?” he asked, clearly intrigued.

Logan let the claws slide back in. “I’ll tell you later. Let’s get you out of here first, before that guy comes back and tries to make baby Sabretooths with you – cause it sure as hell smells as if that was what he had in mind.” He didn’t pose it as a question but he couldn’t help cocking Summers – it seemed wrong to call him Cyclops when he so obviously had two eyes – an enquiring look.

Despite the blows to the head he had suffered, Summers seemed as quick as ever. “I broke his nose,” he explained. “It didn’t do a lot for his temper but it certainly dampened his ardor. I thought you were him coming back to close the deal.”

“That would account for the sweet talk. Pissing off that guy not getting old for you then?”

Summers shrugged a little petulantly. “I might not have been able to stop him doing what he liked, but I was damned well going to stop him enjoying it. I had a commentary all planned. I was thinking of going with a size theme.”

Logan decided that he liked pissy Summers more than Boy Scout Summers, even if his mind was somewhat reeling from the thought of what damage Sabretooth would have done him if Summers had started critiquing his performance when Sabretooth was…in situ. 

“You weren’t kidding about that head injury, were you? Let’s get you out of here before you have any more bright ideas. Where is your Prince Charming anyway?”

“He lost it and the guards had to pull him off me, and then he was throwing them around, and the orderlies were trying to pull him off them, and someone tried to tazer him and it all got very ugly. They’re still talking him down somewhere in the hope of preventing him from killing me before his big bad boss gets back and has them all murdered for screwing up. They seemed to think that if they let him come back in here, he might forget the foreplay.”

Logan barked with laughter and cast Summers another glance of unwilling admiration. The guy had been absolutely _trashed_ ; thrown against the walls, dragged along the floor, half-drowned, half-frozen, kicked, punched, pounded, and threatened with what would undoubtedly have been a very brutal rape by an infamously psychotic mutant twice his size, and yet despite the blood and the bruises and the bare feet and the soaking wet clothes that were little better than rags, he was keeping it all together. Logan realized, a little guiltily, that he had never given Summers anything like enough credit in the past. The guy had balls. But Logan also couldn’t get over how young he looked without the visor. With a twinge of guilt, he realized that if Summers have ever whammied him with those baby blues when Logan was flirting with Jean, he would probably have cut it out straight away. Winding up uptight asshole Summers had been fun, but a reproachful look from _those_ eyes would have carried a hell of a punch.

As they reached the mineworks entrance in what had to be the easiest rescue in the history of genetic mutation, Logan was already dialing Hank and telling him and Storm to get in the jet and get their asses over to Alkali Lake. He would be the guy on the motorcycle driving like a bat out of hell with a passenger hopefully hanging on behind.

The passenger? They could see when they got there. He didn’t want to ruin the surprise.

The truth was he didn’t want his usually calm and collected comrades driving the plane into a mountain in their shock at hearing that Cyclops was still alive. Not only would it break everyone’s hearts afresh to lose Beast and Storm, but when Summers got his memory back, if he discovered that any harm had come to his beloved plane, he would make everyone’s life hell.

***

Logan had naturally assumed that once he handed Summers over to Storm and Beast, those guys would take over his care. They were the ones who had known Cyclops since he had been an annoyingly earnest teenager, after all. What he hadn’t banked on at all was that although they were open-mouthed (Beast) and teary-eyed (also Beast) and radiant with happiness (Storm) to see Cyclops again, he didn’t know them from Adam. Both of them went to wrap him in a fond embrace, and then took another look at the state of him, winced, and held off. He nodded to them politely, albeit without recognition, but his gaze had gone straight to the jet.

“What a beauty,” he said appreciatively.

“Some things never change,” Logan muttered and, taking Summers’ arm, chivvied him into the jet before he and Beast carried in the motorcycle and lashed it in the cargo hold. It took him a moment to realize that Summers had not objected to him chivvying him, and that, instead of immediately being drawn to Beast and Storm, he took the seat next to Logan.

Logan had also expected someone else to start patching up Summers, but when he tentatively mentioned that the guy could probably do with a respray, Storm pointed out that of the four members of the team currently on board the jet, three had a pilot’s license, two had amnesia, one had a medical license, but only one was currently available for any first aid. “Unless you would like a flying lesson, of course?” she suggested sweetly.

“Bad luck for you,” Logan told Summers. “Looks like I’ll be your doctor for this flight.”

Summers had just grinned at him – and it was a shock to realize that every time he had smiled in the past it had indeed been going to his eyes, they were just invisible – as relaxed with Logan as if Logan were a kindly uncle instead of a guy with serious anger management issues. It was the same when Logan got out the bottled water and the cotton waste and start wiping off the blood on his face. Summers put up with it the way a kid put up with having his face washed – not liking it but accepting it was going to be done and there wasn’t much point grousing about it. It was all kind of weird and wonderful to have Cyclops accepting Logan’s authority as if it had always been this way between them. Noticing that Summers was sitting in a tense upright position instead of leaning against the seat, Logan said, “Did you hurt your back?”

“It’s a little sore,” Summers admitted.

That was when Logan eased him around so he could take a look and saw that huge bloody ‘X’ that Sabretooth had carved into his back with his claws. His exclamation made Storm and Hank both look around, and it was just as well they had been using autopilot or the jet would have gone into a tailspin.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Logan breathed. And for a minute he didn’t just feel anger, he felt a sickening sense of guilt, because it looked like the kind of injury he would have inflicted. It was, in fact, exactly what he might have done to Scott Summers if he had ever truly lost his temper with him.

“He said something about making me an X-Man,” Summers said. “Does that mean something?”

“Other than that he’s a sick fuck who needs to die? Yes. You are an X-Man. You were the team leader of the X-Men.”

“Because we’re all illiterate and can only sign our names with a cross…?” Summers hissed a little as Logan bathed his bloody back.

“Because we work for a man called Xavier, with an X. Doing good, in case you were worried we might be bank robbers. We’re mutants.”

“I gathered that from all the tests. Apparently my mutant power was knocked out by some opposing force. The guy running the tests also gave me various treatments to keep it out of commission. It was something to do with my eyes, wasn’t it?”

“Did they tell you that?”

“No, it was the way you looked at them as if you’d never seen them before.”

“I never had,” Logan admitted. “Although that wasn’t why I was looking at them. They’re just so goshdarned pretty.”

Summers grinned at him over his torn shoulder in a way that Summers _never_ grinned at him, as if they were best buds and equals, and Logan wasn’t a dick who was always trying to undermine his authority and steal his girlfriend. It occurred to Logan that Summers might think that joke was funny because he didn’t actually know what he looked like, if no one had shown him a mirror in the last few weeks. He might not know that his eyes really were kind of pretty.

Summers said, “You didn’t tell me my name?”

“You don’t know your name?” Logan stared at him in disbelief. “What the hell have they been calling you for the past six weeks?”

“Patient Zero, or other, less repeatable things.” Summers darted an awkward look at Storm, clearly feeling that her maidenly ears should not be sullied.

“Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but I’m afraid your name really is ‘Shut your mouth or I’ll punch you in the face’. Your parents were kind of tough.”

“Please, Logan, don’t be a dick.” And it could have been Cyclops speaking, except Cyclops would probably never have relaxed enough or stopped worrying about his role as leader for long enough to say it with that laugh in his voice.

“It’s Scott Summers.”

Summers breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s not too bad. I was afraid it might be something stupid.”

“I didn’t tell you your code-name yet. That _is_ stupid.”

Logan found himself teasing and being teased by a Scott Summers who kept darting looks at him from under those long black eyelashes that were filled with a sort of frank, youthful…admiration. It was a shock to realize, as he amateurishly patched the guy up, that, of course, to this amnesiac Summers, Logan was a hero; Logan was the guy who had rescued him from Sabretooth and evil experiments and ongoing torture and imminent rape. To this Scott Summers, Logan was in fact kind of awesome. 

It was ridiculous, of course, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t already get too much of that hero-worship from Rogue and Jubilee, but, somehow it meant more coming from Summers. It wasn’t as if everything had been knocked out by that blow to the head: Summers might not remember who he was but he had sure as hell done what any other version of Cyclops would have done and kept trying to escape, whatever it cost him. He’d had six weeks of not knowing who he was, how he came to be where he was, or what was going to happen to him next, other than that it was probably going to hurt, and he had still functioned like an X-Man. Yet, for all that, he kept looking over at Logan the way the younger kids looked at him sometimes, like he could walk on water and juggle fire. Logan had to admit that it made him feel a little warm and tingly.

He finished his amateurish patch-up job, explained that Hank would sort him out properly back at the school, and then wrapped him in a blanket, which Summers pulled around him with a little sigh of relief at finally being warm.

Logan reached across and stroked a straying strand of blood-spiked hair off the cut on Summer’s forehead, like it was a medical thing, for the sake of the wound, and not because he wanted to reassure himself that he really was sitting next to him, not a dream, but alive, and breathing, and in one, un-atomized, piece. “Sorry it took so long to find you,” he said.

“Thanks for turning up at all,” Summers returned, a little awkward, now they weren’t bantering. “I was starting to think I’d picked the wrong vacation spot.”

Logan thought about how things could have gone if he had turned up two hours later and what kind of a state Summers would have been in after Sabretooth-in-a-rage had finished ripping up his insides; and then he thought how it could have been if he had turned up a month earlier when Jean first started whispering to him. If he had understood then, heard her properly, carried her dream words through to the waking world. That would have saved Summers a whole lot of pain.

He turned his head to find Summers looking at him solemnly. “For me, Logan, you turned up at just the right time.”

“Oh, I’m a goddamned hero in a fairytale,” Logan growled.

Summers smile was sweet and self-deprecating and just a little shy. “To me, you kind of…are.”

Logan realized he had absolutely no answer to that.

***

It was not surprising that Summers fell asleep while they were still airborne; he’d been through a lot and was completely exhausted. The surprising part wasn’t even that he fell asleep slumped against Logan, his head resting damply on Logan’s shoulder. The surprising part was that Logan let him, even staying in an awkward position so as not to disturb his slumber. 

“The guy’s all in,” he muttered to Storm when she looked back at them and her eyes widened in surprise. The warm smile of approval she gave him made him want to shove Summers off him and dump him onto the floor but he resisted the urge, just growling, “I’m not going soft.”

“I know,” she reassured him. “No one who’s ever seen you with Rogue or Jubilee or Kitty could ever think you were _going_ soft.”

“Where I come from weather goddesses are ten a penny,” he told her. Instead of getting pissy like a normal person, Storm and Hank just shared one of those annoyingly superior smiles that people did who had super-powers _and_ self-control.

Still, he found himself waking Summers up kindly when they got back to the school. “Hey, we’re home,” he said, and for a reason he couldn’t quite have explained, gently ran the back of his finger down his cheek instead of giving him a shake.

Those impossibly long black eyelashes fluttered and then Logan once again got the full effect of the cobalt-cerulean-sky-blue-goddamned-orbs gazing right at him, first in confusion and then with a relief that lit them up from within, because Logan was the good guy who had saved Summers from the bad guy and as long as he was around everything was okay. Logan was so freaked out that he almost gabbled ‘I would have slept with your wife if she hadn’t been a shape-shifting someone else at the time’ or brought up all the times he’d borrowed his motorbike without asking. But Summers was already straightening up and looking out of the window with interest.

“Is this the school you told me about?”

“This is it.”

Summers looked up at Logan and, despite the bruises, his eyes were sparkling. “Arriving in a special jet in an underground hangar in mutant school is definitely the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in my life that I remember.”

“Given that your memory goes back six weeks and you spent every other part of it having the crap kicked out of you, I’m figuring someone buying you a milkshake would probably make your top ten best memories no trouble at all.”

“Can I have a milkshake?”

“No,” Logan assured him, helping him up. “Scott Summers doesn’t partake of unhealthy food or beverages, also, you’re a teacher at a school – you have to set a good example.”

“What about beer?”

“I may have a secret stash and I _may_ share it with you, if you’re good. Now, will you just lean on me and stop pretending every damned muscle in your body hasn’t seized up?”

Summers gave him another one of those grateful smiles that made Logan feel at once embarrassed, uncomfortable, and pleased, and leaned on him. 

As Logan helped a stiffened-up Summers limp his way to the infirmary, Summers was gazing around at everything: Danger Room, shocked children, school rooms, science labs, fascinated and full of curiosity, and asking way too many questions.

“It’s a school for mutants,” Logan growled at him. “Not goddamned Disneyworld. Ask someone who cares how it all works.”

Unperturbed by Logan’s crankiness and still gazing around wide-eyed, Summer said, “Oh, like you didn’t think it was awesome the first time you saw it.”

Logan grimaced inwardly, because he had not exactly been Mister Grateful when the boot had been on the other foot and Summers had saved him from Sabretooth. In fact, as he now remembered with uncomfortably clarity, he had first refused to shake the guy’s hand, then manhandled him threateningly. 

Summers said anxiously, “Logan, what’s wrong?”

Logan realized with a shock that Summers was taking his cue from him so completely that at the first glimmer of genuine unhappiness on his part Summers was thrown for a loop. That was just…wrong.

“I was a shit to you when I first came here,” he said gruffly, wanting to get it out in the open. “I found you annoying.”

“Was I annoying?”

“Intensely.”

Summers grimaced. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’ve forgiven you now.”

“Dare I ask what I did?”

“You were disgustingly polite and handsome and efficient and a goddamned goody two shoes. Also, your girlfriend was really hot, and liked you better than she liked me.”

“Damn, I _was_ annoying. Do I still have the hot girlfriend?”

Such a casual question to an answer involving such a world of pain. Logan couldn’t even begin to deal with it. He just said, “Sorry, kid, no.”

And it was all wrong that Summers should be giving him a look of sympathy because Jean Grey was dead. Logan helped him limp the rest of the way to the infirmary in silence.

 

Given the state of Summers’ clothes, not to mention the whole cerulean orbs thing, Logan wasn’t surprised when Hank drew him to one side in the infirmary and asked in an undertone, “Logan, do you know if Scott was…?”

“No, Scott wasn’t, although I gather that was next on the agenda when Sabretooth got away from the people holding him back. Of course, I have no idea how much damage the surgeons did getting that stick out of his ass.”

Hank gave him a level look, and said, “Sometimes, Logan, you show a decided lack of good taste.”

“Hey, someone has to bring down the level of intellectual debate in this place.” He turned to Summers and said, “You okay with a big blue beastie patching you up?”

“Why not? I was okay with an angry guy with foot-long metal claws doing it,” Summers pointed out. But his eyes said ‘Please, stay….’ 

Logan grimaced, thinking how unfair it was that Summers’ eyes turned out to be a secret weapon even when he _couldn’t_ shoot goddamned energy beams out of them. It was a relief when Beast gave him a sedative to put him out for the exam and he stopped looking around the laboratory with all that wide-eyed curiosity, completely unaware that this was the place where his wife should have been; that it should have been Jean bathing his wounds and x-raying his body, not Beast, and sure as hell not Logan.

“What’s the verdict?” Logan asked tersely, after what felt like an eternity.

Beast gave him one of those kindly, soul-searching glances. “The short answer is that he should recover fully, and with the right psychic stimulation, I think the mental pathways to his memories could easily be re-opened. He seems to have been subject to a number of scans and tests that have left his brain a little…bruised, and the initial injury was quite severe, coming, as it did on top of his old brain damage, but I don’t believe that any permanent damage has been done.”

“Old Cyke was brain-damaged? Well, I guess that would explain a lot.”

“The brain damage was the reason why it was impossible for him to regulate his optic beams himself; the part of his mind that could usually be trained to do so was too badly scarred. Hence the need for the ruby quartz visor.” 

Logan waved an all-encompassing hand over the bruised and battered body laid out naked in front of them. “And the rest of it?”

“I’ve stitched the deeper cuts and with luck they won’t scar. As to the rest of it, I think he’ll probably make a very rapid recovery now that he’s receiving proper medical care and, of course, better food.”

“You can’t start on that second one too soon, Hank. I can see all his ribs.”

“Logan, trust me, Scott has been in far worse condition than this in the past, and always made a full recovery. He was in excellent shape to begin with, after all, and has youth on his side. The physical damage is all surface, and will heal. As you correctly surmised, there was no sexual abuse, which is a huge relief, as, temperamentally, I suspect that he would probably have taken longer to recover from something so psychologically damaging.”

“Psychologically damaging?” Logan echoed in disbelief. “Screw his mental state, Hank. If a seven foot tall mutant with inhuman strength and no self-control had decided to make him his date for the night, you would have been stitching Summers back together for a month.” He cast a look at Cyclops and it hurt far more than he would have expected to see Fearless Leader Boy all claw-raked and battered and…vulnerable. Jean would have been distraught to see him like this; every bruise would have stabbed her in the heart. He clenched his fists just at the thought of how utterly in Sabretooth’s power he had been. “That guy would have ripped him to pieces. That whole cell stank of rage. If Summers hadn’t knocked all the sap out of his stalk by breaking his nose, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened.”

“Then don’t,” Beast suggested kindly. “Scott certainly didn’t seem to be letting it trouble him.”

“Yeah, well, Scott has taken a few too many blows to the head, if you ask me.”

“That, of course, is also a possibility,” Beast returned smoothly. “Why don’t you get some rest, Logan? I’ll call you if he looks like waking up.”

“What makes you think I want to be here when he wakes up?” Logan countered.

Beast just shrugged. “I’m not saying that you do. I’m just saying that I will call you.”

***

No doubt for inscrutable female reasons of her own, Storm had told the kids that Logan would fill them in on how their beloved Cyclops was back from the dead and no longer wearing his visor. Which was why he walked out of the infirmary into a babble of noisy kids.

“Is it really him…?”

“Wolverine, what happened…?”

“Did you see his _eyes_ …?”

“It’s really Cyclops. He got kidnapped by bad guys. I did see his eyes. Turns out they’re blue. Oh, and he’s a lot less dead than we thought. Anything else?”

“Is he going to be okay?” Bobby asked while Rogue and half the school echoed his question vigorously.

“Beast says he’s going to be fine.”

“Is he going to get his powers back?”

“Probably. But there’s no point bugging him about that or anything else because he took a bang to the head, which knocked out his memory.”

“Like you?” Rogue asked.

“Yeah, like me, except I doubt he’ll handle it with my customary grace and good humor.” As everyone exchanged awkward looks, Logan sighed. “Yes, that was a joke. Just – leave the guy alone to get his bearings, okay? Now, go to class or something. Pretend like you’re in a school.”

Rogue waited behind when the others left, and her eyes were warm and full of admiration. “You saved him.”

“Yeah, eventually.”

She grimaced at his bleakness. “Is he hurt bad?”

“Not according to Beast. He says he’ll he be just dandy. Of course, getting his memory back isn’t going to be a whole lot of fun for him, given that the guy he looked up to as a father and the woman he loved are both dead….”

“Maybe the Professor isn't dead,” Rogue said firmly. “If Cyclops is still alive, maybe he is, too.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, kid,” Logan warned her. “Getting Cyke back in more or less one piece was a miracle. I doubt we’re due any more.”

“Well, I’m going to believe he's still alive,” Rogue insisted firmly. “Jean had all the power in the world there for a while. We don’t know what she was capable of. But if she found a way to save Cyclops from the Phoenix, maybe she found a way to save the Professor, too.”

As Rogue ran after Bobby, Logan thought sadly that she might even be right. Jean might have found a way to save the Professor, but, given the way she had sacrificed herself for the rest of them before, he was pretty sure that she, at least, was gone for good. And that meant that he was in no hurry for Cyclops to get his memory back. Right now, the guy was just happy that no one was smacking him around or experimenting on him. He thought the X-jet was shiny and the school was the world’s biggest train-set. Given the state he had been in before he went off to Alkali lake to get blasted halfway to oblivion, Logan couldn’t help thinking that the longer it took for his memory to come back, the better.

 

It was strange to be sitting beside Scott Summers bed and not to feel conflicted. It wasn’t that he’d ever wished actual harm on the guy, he truly hadn’t, but he would never have minded him making a fool of himself, tripping over, or landing on his ass, stubbing his goddamned toe even, anything to take off some of that annoying poise. Except now he didn’t feel that way and he didn’t think it was just because Jean was gone and there was no point being pissed off with a rival when the object of one’s mutual affection was already dead. All the people in the world whose head Jean could have whispered in, and she had chosen his – not Storm, not Beast. Not the people who had known Scott Summers since he was a scrawny teenager. She had chosen _him_. She had trusted _him_ to save the man she loved. And it was as if she had written a love letter to both of them with that action – using literally her last breath to try to save Scott, and at the same time telling Logan that she had always known he was a far better man that he believed himself to be. And in doing so, Jean had turned Scott Summers from a love rival into a sacred trust. The rest Summers had done himself. 

Not just being such a stubborn bastard who wouldn’t back down – qualities that Logan could hardly fail to appreciate – but being so full of wonder at the world the moment it stopped actually kicking him in the head, and most of all, being so full of faith in the man who had saved him. There hadn’t been an instant from when their eyes had met in that hellish cell when Summers had so much as flinched from him, not from the claws, not from the anger in his eyes, or the gravel in his voice. He had looked at Logan and he had seen a man he could trust. 

In the past, of course, Scott had known – because Logan had taught him from their first meeting – that this was a guy who might have his back in a crisis, but would never miss a chance to put him down. This was a guy who, should he ever back down or let himself be intimidated even for an instant, would alpha male steamroller him straight away. Looking back, Logan had to concede, that he had never been exactly relaxing company for Cyclops. It was small consolation to also remember that when Cyclops had completely lost it, it was Logan who had given him what comfort he could. Logan who had held him and tried to talk him down, even through the dizzying pain of his own grief. And it was Logan who had tried to get him back on track, remind him of his responsibilities, and stop him heading back to Alkali Lake….

It helped to remember that. In between all the little digs and jabs and snide remarks which now made him wince uncomfortably, there had never been a moment when he would have let actual _harm_ come to Cyclops that he could prevent. He had certainly wished that Jean would leave Summers for him. He had never wished her to be a widow.

Yes, it definitely helped to remember that now as he sat by his bedside and waited for him to wake up.

Summers stirred, then winced at the pain in his back, and then opened his eyes. Logan wondered how long it would be before the shock of them wore off for everyone. Before everyone stopped thinking ‘Oh my God! Cyclops has eyes!’ Before everyone stopped noticing how very blue they were.

Then Summers focused on him and smiled in recognition and relief and Logan found himself smiling back, even though smiling wasn’t really something he did, just on principle. 

“Okay?” he said.

“Pretty hungry,” Summers returned, which was a lot more convincing than any ‘fine’ would have been.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know. What do I like?”

“You tend to eat whatever’s put in front of you so as to set a good example to the children. You even eat all your vegetables. You’re that guy, you know.”

Summers grimaced. “Oh, _that_ guy.”

“Do you know what you look like?” As Summers shook his head, Logan reached for a mirror and then said, “Do you want to wait until you look less like someone who got bounced off the walls?”

Summers scratched at his itchy stubble. “No, I want to shave. Can’t do that without looking myself in the eye.”

Logan held up the mirror, hoping that Summers wasn’t going to fall in love with his own reflection like that guy in the myth. Far from swooning at the sight of his own beauty, however, Summers grimaced and wrinkled his attractive nose. “I thought I was older. I _feel_ older.”

“Yeah, sorry, kid, you’re young _and_ handsome. Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?”

“Not so handsome at the moment,” Summers returned, entirely without irony. Logan wondered what face he was looking at, because the one he could see might have cuts and bruises on its high, chiseled cheekbones, and a cut across its perfect mouth, not to mention a cut on the forehead, under the wavy dark hair, and one by the blindingly blue left eye, but it still hadn’t exactly been hit by the ugly stick.

Logan shook his head in disbelief and Summers looked defensive. “What did I say?”

“How frikkin’ gorgeous do you want to be? As things were we barely got you out of there a virgo intacto. One less black eye and Sabretooth would have nailed you a month ago.”

“Sinister told him not to,” Summers explained in some embarrassment. “Victor was under strict orders not to maul, mutilate, dismember or…deflower me, however annoying he might find me. That’s why the guards intervened when he lost his temper. They thought he was going to break all the rules at once and get them all killed.” He cocked Logan a sideways look. “I’m not really a virgo intacto, am I? Please tell me I’m not _that_ dull.”

“Well, you were pretty dull, to be honest. I don’t think you were ever throwing your car keys into the fruit bowl at the end of the evening and then going home with whoever picked them up. As far as I know, you pretty much dated Jean and then married Jean.”

He couldn’t entirely keep the pain from his voice and Summers winced. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes. She’s dead. You were in mourning when you went missing. We thought you’d been killed. In fact we thought you’d been atomized. It wasn’t that we didn’t care, we just didn’t think there was any part of you out there to find. I looked for you, but all I found was your visor – the one you used to wear when you could fire energy beams out of your eyes.”

Summers’ eyes widened. “Cool,” he said,

“You don’t say ‘cool’,” Logan told him. “You’re a teacher. You’re all about the proper syntax.”

“How old am I anyway?”

“I think you’re maybe…twenty-five or something.”

“God, really? And I’m already a dull widower who only eats healthy food and uses proper syntax? Where is there for me to go when I get middle-aged?”

“Summers, I’ve been wondering that myself for a while.”

Summers just flickered him a reproachful look from under those long black lashes and Logan winced at the impact. Those damned eyes were definitely going to take some getting used to. “Just as well you used to have to wear a visor,” he told him roughly. “You’d have been unbearably spoilt without it.”

That went over new Summers’ head as much as it would have gone over old Summers’ head. The guy had his faults, but he certainly wasn’t vain. He gave Logan a look of confusion and Logan decided to hold off on telling him that he was kinda handsome. There might be times when that was something a guy wanted to hear, but probably not from one guy with claws when another guy with claws had needed to be dragged off him by six guys with tazers to stop him banging him like a drum.

Summers put his head on one side and said, “So, you and I weren’t…?” And he didn’t even sound embarrassed about it, just mildly curious.

“Why would you think that?”

“You did show up and rescue me – that could be seen as quite romantic.”

“What if I said we were?” Logan countered with a growl.

Summers shrugged in a most unSummerslike fashion. “Well, it would be somewhat less dull of me to be secretly dating a guy with metal claws, you have to admit.”

“Sorry, kid. You weren’t. In fact, name an interesting activity and you can pretty much guarantee you wouldn’t have been doing it.”

“Well, why was I so boring?”

Logan almost made a flippant remark and then sighed. “Because you needed to be in control for the very good reason that if you ever lost control you had the ability to level mountains just by opening your eyes. When you’re carrying all that destructive power within you, you either take yourself away from people so you can’t do them any harm, and become an ornery loner, or you live among them, knowing you can never lose your temper, never lose your focus, never drop your guard, or people will die, and it will be all your fault.”

“And thereby turn into an uptight, self-flagellating martyr who constantly second-guesses himself?”

“See? I knew your memory would come back.”

Summers gave him the finger and it was so unexpected that Logan could have kissed him. He felt quite emotional. “Summers, I may have to hug you.”

“Screw you,” Summers told him with a grin.

“Seriously, it’s like I’m God making Adam in his own image.”

“You’re so full of it!”

“Hey, if you want to eat you’d better be nice to me. I know where they hide the chocolate.”

Summers gave him a pleading look – a look that Cyclops could not have employed even on Jean because of the ruby quartz always hiding his eyes. Full throttle big blue eyes and long, slightly damp lashes fluttering like the world’s most adorable moppet. “Please, Logan. I’m _very_ hungry.”

“You know, without your memories and without your visor, you’re a manipulative little shit,” Logan said in some admiration.

“Bad men were mean to me, Logan. They called me bad names.”

“Nothing to the names I’m going to call you if you don’t cut out the cutesy crap. It’s sickening.”

Summers gave him a thoroughly mischievous and not remotely cutesy grin. “Does it work?”

“Hell, yes,” Logan admitted. “I’m made of adamantium, not stone.” 

“Then show me the way to the kitchen. I’m starving.”

“Beast won’t like you getting out of bed without his say-so and _you_ wouldn’t approve of you eating in between meals and ruining your appetite.”

“Beast can bite me, and nothing could ruin my appetite. I could eat a dead rhino.”

Logan thought about pointing out that this was all very unlike him and not at all responsible and then decided that to hell with it. As soon as Summers got his memories back he’d go back to being uptight and miserable and playing strictly by the rules. This might be the guy’s only chance to live a little. Who was he to stand in his way?

“I’ll get you some pants,” he said.

He did better, getting him pants and a sweatshirt to hide his bandaged back. They were Summers’ own set, but after six weeks of ill treatment, they hung on him a little. Still made him look a lot more like himself than a hospital gown. Summers pulled them on gingerly, wincing as the sweatshirt touched his sore back, pulling the drawstring tight on the pants and revealing the pelvic bones as he did so. When he folded back the sleeves of the sweatshirt his wrists were revealed as sharper and finer than they should have been.

“You can eat any damned thing you like,” Logan told him shortly. “And to hell with the vegetables.”

Summers flashed him another of those unCyclops-like grins, like they were partners in crime, and the world was a fun place to live in. “Logan,” he said solemnly, “I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

***

##### Epilogue

As he helped Summers to limp towards the kitchen, there was such a strong presence of the Professor in the house that Logan kept looking over his shoulder for him; every heightened animal instinct he possessed telling him that the guy was _right there_ , watching him. He could practically hear the soft rumble of his wheels over the parquet flooring, could practically see the benevolent expression on his face as he watched Logan being all sappy over Cyclops.

_Don’t overthink it, Logan. Keep doing exactly what you're doing because what you're doing is exactly what Scott needs right now…._

He did not need that deep, sonorous voice putting imaginary affirmation in his head. The warmth and relief it kindled were entirely irrelevant. 

He became aware that Summers was leaning on him, the way you leaned on a friend – carelessly, knowing he would always take your weight. With an inner growl, Logan dumped him – gently – in a chair, and began getting out the supplies, tossing the glass down in front of Summers, the wholesome quart of milk, the unwholesome sugar-high-inducing cookies.

Amused, Summers said, "How old do you think I am?"

"A lifetime younger than I am, smartass."

Summers shrugged and dunked a cookie in his glass of milk, eating it with gusto.

Logan couldn't help just sidling one step towards madness – because when had anything in his life been sane? – and murmuring mentally to the non-existent Professor: _He's going to remember. He's going to remember Jean. He's going to be devastated._

_Yes, he is. He's also going to be amongst friends that he might be willing to let help him this time. And, Logan, the other thing he's going to remember is this._

Logan just knew that the Professor was going to insist on spelling out all the touchy-feely crap for him but he couldn't stop himself asking _This?_

_He's going to remember you. You coming to look for him when there was no reason in the world to think he was anything but atoms scattered to the four winds. You – helping him when he was vulnerable and alone – with tact and kindness. He's going to remember that, when it mattered, he had the best friend in you that anyone could have._

_Okay, that's enough of that!_

It was way more than enough. He wasn't that guy and he didn't want anyone thinking he was. Not even a dead telepath who wasn't really there.

With an inner growl he said shortly, _And what if it turned out that I don't just want to be good friends with this version of Cyclops? What if – six months down the line – when he has his memories back and the first grief is fading, I want to put the moves on him? What if – what I want from this guy is to make him mine?_

And there was that rich, all-knowing voice saying exactly the opposite of what he had expected: _Logan, I have long thought that might be an excellent idea, for both of you._

An imaginary Professor X would not have said that. He would have been telling Logan to back away from the straight arrow he loved like a son. Did that mean that the Professor wasn't…gone…gone? That he was just…temporarily displaced, like all the kids kept hoping? That he might, like Summers, be coming back?

The relief at the thought made him a little dizzy and it took him a moment to notice that Summers had fetched Logan a glass, filled it with milk, and now pushed it towards him, only a little tentatively. There was a hint of small-boy-trying-to-feed-a-tiger-through-the-bars, but it was mostly confident.

Logan said, "You're kidding, right?"

"You seem very stressed. Milk and cookies would help with that."

"Oh, you would know that from your extensive memories, lasting all of six weeks, would you?" Nevertheless Logan found himself dipping a cookie in the milk and taking a bite. It tasted surprisingly good. It was even possible that his blood-pressure – sky high for most of the day – might have dropped a little.

Still, a little unsure of him, but utterly focused on him – following every fleeting expression that flickered across Logan's face as if he was the most fascinating book that he had ever read, and would never get done with studying – Summers said, "Are you…okay, Logan?"

Logan found himself reaching across and stroking some of that mussed dark hair back from Summer's face, found himself gazing into those intensely blue eyes for a long, satisfying look that ended when Summers dropped his gaze, and a pink flush stained those high cheekbones of his. Because it was way too soon, and because Logan couldn't help – it seemed – going on being a goddamned hero around this guy, he just leaned forward and kissed him, very gently, on the forehead.

He said, "I'm fine. You're going to be. Not right away, but – in a year's time. We're going to sit in this kitchen, and you're going to be okay. And you know what…?"

Summers lifted his gaze, more shyly now, but with that flicker of excitement there that had sparkled when he saw the sleek black lines of the plane for what – for him – had felt like the first time. And how about that? Logan was looking as shiny as the X-Jet to Cyclops. Who would ever have thought that day would come?

"What?"

"I've had worse days than today. It may even be that I haven't had many better. It may even be that this was a very good day for me."

"It was kind of a good day for me, too," Summers offered. "Not that we're talking about me."

"No, we're not, so be quiet – and finish your milk and cookies."

Deliberately, Summers flicked some milk at him and Logan flicked some back, and they grinned at each other, stupidly, like life might possibly not have it in for them every single day. Like there was a possibility that they might be capable of happiness and the guy on the other side of the table might be the one who was going to supply it, along with a whole bucket-load of friendship, and affection, quite possibly vigorous and athletic sex, and almost certainly, a great deal of disagreement.

And somewhere in the ether, it seemed to Logan, that he heard a deep, familiar voice saying softly: _All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well…. ___

##### The End

____


End file.
